“You and Max play really well together,” I told her outside the arena.
Ketheria grabbed one of the glass pods and said, “Not as good as you two.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Are you going to ever shake this mood?”
“What mood?”
“You’ve been negative about everything since the kiss at the Labyrinth. I’m sure you’re beginning to annoy people.”
I spun around in the pod. I felt my face grow hot. “You know?”
Ketheria closed her eyes and shook her head. Of course she knew. If she didn’t pick it up from one of us, I was sure Max had said something. And worse still, she was right. The fact was I had started to annoy myself. I tried to shake it off, put the incident behind me, but my thoughts wouldn’t let me. I kept playing every possible scenario over and over in my head, everything I could have said, and everything I could have done — until my brain was mush.
“Maybe Quest-Nest will help,” Ketheria offered.
“I’ll try anything right now,” I confessed.
We stood in front of the oval counter where Tinker worked, but no one was there. A different alien, humanoid and female, finally came out to help us.
“We’re here to see Tinker about a helmet,” I informed her.
“Tinker doesn’t make helmets anymore,” she said, her voice very soft and frail. Her head was covered in soft silks of white and cream that draped over her shoulders.
Ketheria looked at me, waiting for me to say something. “Don’t look at me like that. It was Ceesar’s reference,” I protested.
Ketheria turned to the girl and asked, “Do you know where we can get one? A helmet for a softwire?”
The girl cocked her head to the side and said, “A softwire?”
“Yes. Ceesar said Tinker would help us.”
“Please remain here for just a moment,” she said, and slipped through a door at the back of the oval.
“I don’t like that guy,” Ketheria said with a scowl.
“Who, Tinker?”
“No. Ceesar. He’s not a good person. He’s hiding something.”
“That lumps him in with just about every other Citizen on this ring, Ketheria. You must feel that way about a lot of people you meet.”
“Mostly just him,” she replied as the young girl returned.
“Tinker will meet with you. Please come this way.”
The girl tapped a small device on the counter, and part of it disappeared just like most doors did on Orbis. Are all the doors on Orbis simply holographs? I wondered.
My first thought on entering Tinker’s workshop was that Max would have loved this place. It was a high-tech electronics lab stuffed with computer parts and alien gadgets. Light spilled into the room through four arched windows behind his workbench. At the far end of the room, Tinker stood over the bench with his back to us. I couldn’t tell if the tools fastened to his hands were his actual fingers or not. There was no skin visible on Tinker except for his shiny head. I wondered if that was why he was bald. With those hands, combing his hair seemed like an impossible task.
“I’ll be just a moment,” he said, his voice deep and creamy.
Shallow lines marked the walls like rolling waves. They were the same designs carved into the walls at our home. Cosmic streams of energy, Max called them. Tinker must also be a believer, I thought.
“There, that should do it,” he announced before turning to us.
Tinker’s long blue apron dragged on the littered floor as he moved toward us. His skin was bone white and his crimson mouth cut deeply along his cheeks as he spoke.
“Thank you for your patience. I so hate leaving the flow. It’s quite difficult for me to return to it.”
I simply stared at him. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.
“Um . . . I need a helmet,” I informed him.
“And I’ve been told Ceesar’s going to pay for it?”
“I’ll pay for it myself,” I told him coldly. “I have enough chits.”
I didn’t like the idea that Ceesar had been talking to Tinker behind my back. It immediately made me suspicious. Tinker produced a device to read the chip inside the skin I was wearing and waved it over the vest.
“Yes, you do,” he remarked. “But a helmet for a softwire costs much more than that.”
Suddenly I wanted to leave. Charlie would have known the price. Why did this guy want more all of a sudden? I took Ketheria’s hand and turned for the door. “Sorry to have bothered you,” I replied.
The wheels and wires in Tinkers chest whirled and rattled in sync with his laugh.
“Please stop,” he called to us when we were at the door. “Not everything has to involve money.” The word rolled off his tongue like an insult.
“I just want to buy a helmet,” I said.
Tinker turned his attention to Ketheria. “Come here, child,” he whispered, sitting on a stool so he was a little more at her height. It was a very short stool, so Tinker’s knees almost reached Ketheria’s shoulders. He reached out for the metal headpiece wrapped around her head.
“What are you doing?” I objected.
There was a click, then a suction sound, and the front of the device, the part with the crystal, fell into Tinker’s big metal hands.
“Don’t do that,” I protested. “You can’t have that.”
Ketheria closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It looked like her head was filling up with air more than her chest.
“Take it all in,” he whispered to her. He smiled and then turned to me. “This, for example.” He cradled the stone in his metal fingers and let it catch the light. A rainbow of colors exploded on the walls. “What do you think the cost of this was?”
“I don’t know. The Keepers put it on her.”
“To please the Citizens.” His voice was icy.
I looked at Tinker closely. There was no Citizen insignia anywhere to be found. “Are you a knudnik?” I asked him.
He closed his eyes at the mention of the word. “I was.”
“Then you must be a Citizen now. I thought after your work rule you became a Citizen.”
“I chose not to,” he replied.
Why would someone stay here if he didn’t want to be a Citizen?
“Don’t try to figure everything out, Johnny. Just accept it. There is a reason for everything,” Ketheria said. She could read my mind again, although I was pretty convinced she had been doing fine even with that thing on.
“You made that, didn’t you?” Ketheria asked Tinker.
He moved the metal and crystal device through his fingers with expert ease. “I did,” he replied softly. “This is special to me. Everything I make is special to me. But this . . .” He held it up again. “This is very special. This is truly my best work.”
In the light I could see an OIO symbol carved into the metal behind the crystal. Tinker touched the symbol with a razor-sharp finger and then touched it to his cheek. This guy really did like his work.
“How much did they pay you for it?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he murmured. “Yet it is priceless.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It never does.” Tinker attached the piece to Ketheria’s head again.
“How much more will my helmet cost?”
“It’s not always about money.”
Tinker was talking in circles, and I didn’t like it. Was I supposed to bargain with him? It was obvious he liked his work, but I just wanted a helmet to play the game.
“Come here,” he said.
I followed Tinker to his workbench, and he pulled several helmets off the wall. They, too, possessed the same bulky piece around the collar as the one Dop had given me, and I knew they were for softwires.
“How many softwires have you made helmets for?” I asked him.
“Only one,” he answered.
The first helmet fit perfectly, as if it were sculpted for my head. “How did you know this would fit me?” I gaspe
d.
“It’s a price I may have to pay one day,” he said.
More double-talk. He was beginning to sound like Ketheria. I felt a surge of energy around the base of my skull, and the visor blinked on.
“Can people scope me with this?” I asked him.
“Of course.”
“Do you have any helmets without that capability?”
Tinker passed the wand over my vest, deducting the amount of chits for the helmet. “That is not the way,” he said, and handed Ketheria another helmet. “This will fit better than that bulky one they’ll make you wear,” he said to her.
Ketheria tried the helmet on and smiled. It fit perfectly over her telepathic blocker.
“Thank you, Tinker,” she responded.
Tinker smiled and closed his eyes.
“How much for that one?” I asked.
“A gift.” He sighed, placing his hands on our shoulders and moving us toward the door. “You will have to come back and visit me again, won’t you?”
“Definitely,” Ketheria said, but I was rather glad to be leaving.
At the door I turned to him quickly and said, “Wait. I want to know more about Ceesar. You know him, right? Who is he? Is he a wormhole pirate? What’s he doing here?”
Tinker frowned. “Come back and we may talk some more. Right now I have work to do.”
“But wait!”
The door reappeared, and we were standing behind the counter with our new helmets.
“I like him,” Ketheria said.
“Really? I thought he was strange.”
“Wonderfully strange,” she replied.
“We should practice with the scope if we’re going to play together,” Theodore insisted, after I asked him to be my new partner for Quest-Nest. I didn’t know if he was excited to play or excited to get on the tetrascope.
“We don’t need it,” I told him.
“Yes, we do. You don’t understand. You can think what they think. If you want to know how they choose the sort, scope them. Find out what they are afraid of, what they try to avoid. We need this, JT.”
It didn’t seem fair knowing that much about your opponent. What good was the sort, then, if you knew what everyone was going to do?
“No,” I said. “We can play without it.”
Theodore let out a deep breath and dropped his shoulders. His knuckles were almost dragging on the ground, he looked so low. “Fine,” he mumbled. “We’ll do it your way.”
We went to the arena on the very next spoke. Theodore chose to be the bait only after complaining that without scoping our opponents first, he wouldn’t know what to do with the sort. I agreed, so I was the tracker. The arena was filled since everyone knew Max and Ketheria were playing right after us and a lot of the Citizens had placed side bets on the girls. Charlie came to watch and said he was impressed with the turnout. He told us that sometimes they didn’t get this many spectators at an Illuminate game.
I recognized one of our opponents, a girl, from the Illuminate. The other, a male, I had never seen before. When I slipped my helmet on in the ready room, I worried who was poking around inside my head. I checked every thought twice, worried about what people could see. It was very distracting. I needed to get first choice in the sort because I knew my opponent did not breathe oxygen. She would try to go for GAS, and I wanted to block it. I also wanted to find an easy course because this was Theodore’s first game. He chose to scope most matches instead of playing.
As I feared, I did not get to play the sort first and my opponent chose GAS, as I predicted. I then chose MECHANIC, to push the game toward a version of Ring Defender that I knew Theodore was good at. The game began, and I battled opponents in the air using a slick flying machine while trying to defend the bait from attack. It should have been an easy win, but since Theodore had no practice with the real game, he was clumsy and made some beginner mistakes. I couldn’t blame him. I had made similar blunders when I first played Ceesar.
Despite my efforts, we still lost.
“I told you we should have scoped them,” he complained in the stands after the match.
“You just need practice in the real game,” I argued with him.
The match with Max and Ketheria was about to start. A big alien, a Trefaldoor, was trying to bet with the Citizen next to him. Since betting wasn’t allowed during the Illuminate league games, he refused. I heard Athooyi, who was seated behind me, offer to take his bet.
“On the humans, on the humans!” I heard him shout as four creatures scurried around him.
That’s when I spotted Ceesar and another alien as they came up to Athooyi’s table. Ceesar caught me looking and shook his head, as if he were ashamed of my loss. Why should he care? And why were they even watching a student game?
“JT, aren’t you listening? That’s what makes tetrascopes so good. You don’t need to practice. You can get everything you need by scoping,” Theodore pleaded, refusing to drop his argument.
“Are you allowed to be on those things?” Charlie asked, eavesdropping on our conversation.
“Yeah, to play the game,” Theodore said quickly. “They actually make you do it. You play better.”
I leaned toward Theodore and whispered, “Well, it didn’t seem to help you.”
Theodore just shook his head as if to dismiss me. I had never seen Theodore just flat-out lie like that, especially to Charlie. This was getting serious. I would have talked to Max about it, but I still felt tongue-tied around her. I decided that the next time Theodore wanted to use a tetrascope, I was going with him to find out how much trouble he was really in.
“Well, just be careful and only use them for the game.” Charlie frowned. “I’ve heard some strange stories about those things.”
I snuck a glimpse at Ceesar and watched Athooyi throw something on the table and thrust a finger toward the arena. What is he so mad about? I wondered. Athooyi waved Ceesar off and turned toward the match. Ceesar, who was almost two heads taller than Athooyi and a lot wider, reached forward and grabbed Athooyi’s shoulder. The Citizen spun around, striking Ceesar across the face. He stumbled back, shook it off, and then stepped toward Athooyi as if to challenge him. Before Ceesar could act, the frail creatures that were always around Athooyi sprang toward him. The soft and willowy creatures moved without hesitation, morphing as they positioned themselves to protect Athooyi. Their noses pushed forward as fangs exploded from their upper jaws. Their shoulders heaved up and their forearms mushroomed. They landed in crouching positions as their backs expanded, their fists smacking the ground. These monsters looked ready (and eager) to launch at Ceesar’s throat in an instant. Athooyi never once glanced at the commotion. He was focused on the game now. Max was taking her position in the goal, and Nugget squeezed in front of Charlie and pressed his snout against the glass as I gawked at Athooyi’s henchmen.
“You’re staring again,” Charlie whispered.
“Did you see that?” I said.
“I warned you about him. Now, watch the game. His business is none of your business, and it’s best to keep it that way.”
As Ceesar and his friend slowly backed away from Athooyi, he caught me staring. Ceesar nodded to me, and my eyes darted toward the playing field.
Max and Ketheria won their match easily. Ketheria made a gutsy move: knowing her opponent hated water, she selected LIQUID in the sort, even though she and Max were not the best swimmers. Max must have told her to go for MAGICAL, so they followed colored currents in the water that guided them through the obstacles. It was a perfect example of using one’s head over muscle, and their opponents never saw it coming.
“You girls are good,” Charlie praised them after the match as Nugget bounced around the house imitating their best moves.
I had to admit I was jealous. If I had been playing with Max instead of Theodore, Charlie would be praising me right now.
At the Illuminate on the next cycle, Theodore and I were waiting to grab our taps when I said, “I’ll go with you befor
e our next match.”
“Go where?” he mumbled.
“To the tetrascope place. I don’t know, wherever you go to scope people.”
“You will?” he cried, his tone much cheerier.
“Yeah. I don’t like losing. If you think this will really help us, then I’ll do it.”
“That’s golden, JT!” He grabbed my arm and dragged me to an O-dat near the taps. The screen listed teams looking for a match. Theodore entered our names, and a host of opponents appeared. It wasn’t difficult to find someone to play against since we had lost our last game. More and more kids were agreeing with Dop that I had cheated in our match because I hadn’t won since, and I think a few also believed that Max was the stronger opponent. Citizens loved to beat up on knudniks, but they didn’t like losing to them.
“We got a match,” Theodore exclaimed. “I’ll get us some time on the scope.”
“Why don’t we just use the ones the school provides?”
“These are better,” he whispered. “Trust me.”
I went to my sleeper early that cycle. I was bored and, quite frankly, a little lonely. No, I was really lonely. My worries about wormhole pirates and what they had to do with me paled in comparison to what was happening with Max and, now, with Theodore. I tried to sleep but didn’t get much of a chance.
“C’mon,” Theodore whispered, shaking me after removing my sleeper from its cave in the wall.
“What are you doing?” I groaned.
“You said we’d use the scope.”
“Now?”
He put his index finger to his mouth. “Shhh, you’ll wake up Charlie.”
Maybe I should, I thought. I dragged myself out of my sleeper and dressed while Theodore checked the hall. This was so unlike him. Normally, I was the one coaxing him to do something we shouldn’t do. Now here he was trying to sneak out while Charlie was asleep.
“Why can’t we go when normal people are awake?”
“These aren’t normal people,” he replied.
That scared me. Now I wanted to go just out of curiosity. What had Theodore gotten involved in?
Wormhole Pirates on Orbis Page 14